One of the more onerous duties of those required in the course of their employment to handle large volumes of cash is the counting and packaging of coins forming a part thereof. In the past, it was common for those in the posession of large numbers of coins to rely on banking institutions to perform the counting and packaging task for them. Increasingly, however, such institutions refuse to accept loose change for deposit, necessitating performance of the counting and packaging operation by the depositer himself.
In response to the need, coin sorting machines have been devised which automatically process coins placed in them, packaging coins of the same denomination into tubular coin wrappers, each of which holds a specific number of coins. While such machines enable the task to be performed rapidly and relatively effortlessly, they are expensive, and most enterprises, particular smaller ones faced with counting and packaging loose change taken in the course of business transactions, are unable to justify the substantial expenditure required for their purchase.
In view of this and other disadvantages, less expensive and simpler devices have been proposed, for example, those involving cylindrical tubes closed on one end, and including a funnel on the other end. Such devices are fabricated to have a tube diameter specific to the denomination of the coin designed to be handled therein, and coins of that denomination deposited in the attached funnel are channeled downward into the tube where they are accumulated in an aligned stack. After alignment has been accomplished, the tubular coin wrapper paper is forced downward over the stacked coins in the tube to accomplish their packaging.
While the device described is relatively inexpensive, it suffers from the fact that coins deposited in the funnel tend to bridge over therein, forming obstructions which block access to the tube, and therefore prevent coin alignment. In addition, coins falling into the tube occasionally tend to dispose themselves therein at an angle to others of the coins previously deposited in the tube, preventing accumulation of the coins in a uniformly aligned stack. Furthermore, since the tubes are enclosed, misalignments resulting from such angled disposition are difficult to rectify.
While coins can also be manually loaded into coin wrapper tubes, one-by-one, the process is prohibitively labor intensive, as well as arduous, particularly when significant amounts of coins must be counted and packaged.